


Sometimes

by catfishCaper



Category: Free!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Gen, M/M, i mean it's implied but, okay it's there you just have to know how it's there, or ask me i'll just tell you, sort of like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-25
Updated: 2013-09-25
Packaged: 2017-12-27 15:12:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/980404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catfishCaper/pseuds/catfishCaper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes he dreamed he was in the ocean, and the ocean was in him, and they were so close it hurt to breathe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sometimes

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to get this out before the last episode aired BUT NO

Sometimes he dreamed he was in the ocean, and the ocean was in him, and they were so close it hurt to breathe.

\--

Sometimes he caught the ones who were supposed to be his friends looking at him when they thought he didn't notice, looking at him with eyes full of fierce pride and conviction, and he wondered if he should ask why the three of them never had any other friends (except Rin when he was so briefly around), why no one was ever let in. He wondered if they thought he wouldn't like it and that was why. He didn't know how to feel about that.  
\--

Sometimes he couldn't help but notice how Makoto looked at the sea, with a look of such melancholy and longing on his face. Which seemed a little nonsensical, considering everything that had happened in that very ocean to someone he cared about so much.

And he couldn't help but notice those rare moments when Makoto would look at him the same way.

\--

Sometimes when he sat in the tub, the quiet and peace and the soothing ripples the water would form when he moved would melt the hours into seconds. The water would grow cooler and cooler as the time grew later and later and sometimes he would be so comfortable he would just fall asleep there in the tub, and all the dry skim and pruny fingers would be worth it because of how natural it all felt.

Even though he still had a strange feeling binding his legs together would make the feeling even more absolute.

\--

Sometimes he thought about those teeth of Rin's, and how no one ever brought them up. He knew they hadn't been there pre-Australia, and he was pretty sure moving south didn't affect physiology so drastically.

He ignored the little voice at the back of his head that told him they were better that way, even though it was the same voice that told him the water was where he belonged.

\--

Sometimes he remembered a time when he was much younger and his grandmother let him rent a video tape about dolphins. He remembered the narrator explaining how the dolphins talked and were actually very intelligent, just like people, though people still couldn't understand what the dolphins were trying to say. He thought it was ridiculous that a bunch of grown up scientists couldn't tell what they were talking about when their words were clear as day, except when the lady was talking over them.

He watched the video many times before it had to be taken back, not just because learning about the dolphins was fun, but because the dolphins themselves had such nice things to say. Well, nice wasn't really the right word. Curious would probably fit better.

_I can't believe they actually decided to send the crown prince with those three, of all the ones they could have picked! Honestly._

_Not like they really had a choice, though, right? It's tradition, and they_ were _the best choices._

_The shark boy was half human! How could that have been the best choice?_

_Of course it was all nonsense. He had a great imagination as a kid, though._

\--

Sometimes he watched them swim and he watched how hard their arms and legs and lungs would work and he thought it all seemed so rough. He thought it ought to be more fluid, less...work.

They worked too hard at it, that was it. Like they were putting on a show. Whose benefit was it for?

\--

Sometimes he thought about how when he was a kid, the teacher told them to draw home, and he drew the ocean. And when Makoto saw it he made him draw his house with his grandma out in front and wouldn't take no for an answer.

Sure, he apologized later, but the point stuck a bit differently than he thought Makoto would prefer--what was so wrong with seeing the ocean as home?

Years later, he knew there was nothing wrong with it, because he still did.

\--

Sometimes he looks at the door to his grandmother's room, just past the door to the bathroom, but he never goes in there, and he probably never will. He's afraid of what he'll find, but he'd never tell anyone that.

\--

Sometimes he sees the way Nagisa looks at Rei--so desperate and sad, yet with so much affection--and for some reason it makes him think of the sea, and for some reason it makes him think of Makoto.

\--

Sometimes he hears Nagisa and Makoto talking when they think he isn't around, and every conversation confuses him more and more.

"Why don't you trust me, Mako-chan? It's not like I'll be hurting anyone!"

"You don't think you will be, not now. But you'll be hurting yourself! You just don't realize it yet!"

"Hurting myself? This is my decision! You don't trust me, and you don't trust Rei."

"Nagisa, you barely know him! This is a big commitment and I don't think you realize it yet, that's my only problem! What if he doesn't believe you?"

"Well, when I give it to him and show him--"

"Show him? _Give it to him?_ " To his credit, Makoto didn't sound angry, just worried.

"You just don't understand! We can't all have this kind of thing thought out for us since, like, birth! You have to do what's expected of you, Mako-chan, but there's nothing like that for me."

"I just think you should take some more time and consider this more. We still have a year."

"Oh yeah, just one more year until we drop everything to go back to a place we barely remember! What if I don't _want_ to go back?"

The shocked silence that follows chokes even him.

"You can't mean that, Nagisa."

"Don't think you know what I think, _Makoto_. I'll give what I want to him and there's nothing you can do to stop me."

Whatever that means, they never talk about it again, at least not when he's in earshot.

\--

Sometimes he doesn't eat lunch with his friends, he ditches them to swim when he knows no one else will be around. It's not easy to get Makoto off his back, but it's all worth it when he's able to.

One time Gou finds him, but she doesn't try to drag him back, she just sits by the side of the pool and watches him float.

"Rin and I are only half siblings, you know," she says at one point. He didn't know, but he doesn't say anything.

"Dad never told us who his mom was, just that he met her by the beach and it was a...one time thing. Then a baby just showed up on the doorstep when he and mom were newlyweds, and that was him. Crazy, huh? I always used to think when I was little, maybe he's half merman! But if he was half anything, I think he'd be half shark."

He considers this, then asks, "Why not both?" then dives down under the water before she can question what he means. He isn't sure what he means, either.

Neither of them brings it up again.

\--

Sometimes when he's sitting in the tub he thinks. He thinks about school, and he wonders what Makoto and Nagisa and Rei are up to, and he hopes Rin is happy, wherever he is. Sometimes he finds himself thinking about things that maybe should stay locked in the back of his mind, like those few fuzzy memories of his parents, and that sad, dark memory of the day his grandmother died.

She was so old, and so frail, and it was really a miracle she'd lasted as long as she had. She sat him on the edge of the bed and explained how, had it not been for him, she would have passed on long before that day. It didn't really help to stop the crying much. She just smiled at him and told him to give her a few minutes alone with Makoto and Nagisa, but he refused, because what if something happened while he wasn't in the room? She nodded and beckoned to his friends.

"Now you boys, I know you have your duties to your king and queen and to your prince, but would you mind granting an old woman's dying wish?" Makoto and Nagisa nodded quickly. They had been very fond of his grandmother. "I want you to keep him safe until he's eighteen. Just eighteen, you understand? Unless he can find you-know-what all by himself, I want the two of you to give it to him on that day he turns eighteen. Promise me, now!"

They promised.

His grandmother smiled, then turned back to him.

"These are good friends you've got here, Haruka. Don't lose them!"

He'd sink down further in the tub whenever that memory came up and try to forget he thought of it.

\--

Sometimes when he's bored in class (which is often) he draws sea creatures on his notes. There are rays and jellyfish on his math, blue whales and sperm whales and narwhals on his English. Various fish peek around seaweed in the margins of his classical literature notebook, and they always get a smiley face and a "please pay attention class!" from Ama-chan.

He has a sketchbook for art class, and he draws in there too, but all he draws there are the same four creatures: a dolphin, an orca, a penguin, and a great white shark. And they're always together, though the scenes may be different. The art teacher says he should be proud of his skill, but perhaps he should add some variety.

So he draws a butterfly on the penguin's head one day.

The art teacher doesn't notice, but he doesn't stop drawing it in.

\--

Sometimes he goes for runs at night during the summer, and when he looks out at the sea (because he always goes by the sea) he thinks he can see a pod of dolphins there, watching him.

But that doesn't make sense. Dolphins would never go that close to a harbor, would they?

It's nice to pretend, though, he decides, and waves a little the next time he sees them.

\--

Sometimes class doesn't bore him, and he has to give the teachers credit when they can get him to actually follow along. Ama-chan is the best at this. He has always loved stories about the sea, and apparently she does too.

"Today we're going to be looking at some old legends of selkies, from the British Isles. The basic background you should know is a selkie is a creature that lives in the ocean that takes the form of a seal when it's there but a human when it sheds its skin. The stories we'll be reading today focus on the act of stealing the selkie pelt to force them to be yours forever..."

He was intrigued, and it showed, perhaps too well. The class collectively gasped in shock when he volunteered to read a section. He glanced over to see Makoto's reaction to his enthusiasm, but instead of the expected pride that his friend was finally making an effort, Makoto's face was unreadable.

His loss.

\--

Sometimes staying all alone in his big house on the hill makes him a little lonely, though he would never tell anyone that. Makoto seems to understand that, which explains why he spends so much of his time at his best friend’s smaller but livelier house, playing video games or cooking mackerel with Makoto’s mother or watching Ren and Ran. But he can’t be at Makoto’s all the time, and it is in the winter that the emptiness of the house is the worst.

He knows when he was younger, right after his grandmother died, he would go to any effort to stay out of the house as long as possible. That was what led him to race Rin at the swim club before it closed down that day, and deep down he sort of resents Rin for it, because if it weren’t for that race he would have stayed in the middle school swim club, but his love for his friend overcame his hatred of the loneliness of his house.

It is the winter of his second year of high school, with only a few months left until he graduates and becomes a senior, that he becomes fed up with the way the wind whistles through the attic in a way that he can still hear it though it is so quiet, just in the back of his head, and the way the old floorboards sometimes creak even though there is no one else in the house.

He decides to go for a walk, though there is snow in little drifts on the ground. He pulls on his warmest coat and steps out into the fresh air, and he instantly feels better, though not as good as swimming in an indoor pool would make him feel. Or the ocean. But swimming in the ocean in the winter screamed trouble.

He walks the route to school, the long way, though it’s winter break and no one will be there. To his surprise, though, there are two people out in front of the gate. To his even greater surprise, it’s Nagisa and Rei.

“Mako-chan told me I shouldn’t give you this--not yet, anyway--but I waited long enough and I trust you and I want you to have it.”

Is Nagisa blushing? Oh, he is. He can see the red of his underclassman’s face though he is technically hiding behind a bush.

“What--what is this, Nagisa-kun?”

“It’s…a little hard to explain!” Nagisa says, giggling. Rei looks flustered, but that’s nothing new.

“Could you try?”

“Um, I think it would be best to show you! And the weather right now is perfect for it. Hold these.”

Suddenly Nagisa strips down to his underwear. Rei pushes up his glasses in alarm and splutters about the temperature and how indecent Nagisa is being, but Nagisa just shoves his clothes into Rei’s hands, keeping his hold on the black thing he was trying to hand off to him earlier.

“Watch!” Nagisa shakes the black thing out.

He leans forward from his position in the bushes and suddenly there is a hand on his shoulder. “What are you doing here, Haru?”

He looks up, and there’s Mako. “Makoto,” he says in greeting.

“You could catch a cold sitting in the bushes like that, Haru! Come on, let’s go to my house and we can have some hot chocolate.” Makoto stands and takes Haru’s hand to help him up.

He glances over to where Nagisa and Rei were, but they’re gone. He does spy, however, lying in the snow, a thin, yellow feather, similar to the kind found on the head of a rockhopper penguin.

\--

Sometimes, when he actually bothers to look at a calendar, he sees that the anniversary is coming up, and that explains Makoto’s unusually clingy state in recent days. He doesn’t really think it’s such a big deal, though to most people it would be. Losing all memories of childhood can really affect a person, though Makoto and Nagisa and, when she was alive, his grandmother, along with others who knew him, said that he pretty much stayed the same, though it was difficult to explain to people who were supposed to be his friends why he no longer knew their names or recognized their faces.

Every year Makoto would make him stay over at his house, not even allowing them to stop by his own home to pick up a spare swimming suit or some mackerel as a gift for the Tachibana family.

“I just want to reassure myself you’re okay. Sorry to cause you any inconvenience.”

He supposes he understands. Makoto _had_ looked pretty shaken when he finally woke up from that two week coma. He remembers the time so vividly. His hospital room was full of flowers and balloons and dolphin plushies--they would have to spend a fortune to reimburse everyone who sent gifts*--and his grandmother was sitting on the right side of the bed, knitting a black sweater which would later feature a dolphin. Makoto and Nagisa were on the other side of the bed, Nagisa napping on Makoto’s shoulder. His best friend was dozing off as well, until the soft rustling of the bedsheets as Haru sat up was audible. It was then that he stiffened up and opened his eyes. “Haru! You’re awake!”

And he just asked, “Who are you?”

Makoto had paled and his grandmother slowly put down her knitting. Nagisa stirred. “Wha?”

“Who are you people?” he repeated slowly.

He didn’t recognize any of them.

\--

It is the day after he and Makoto and Rin finish their second year of high school and Rei and Nagisa and Gou finish their first that he turns eighteen years old. They’ve organized a party for him at the Iwatobi High School pool, but he doesn’t remember it’s happening until they, thankfully, show up to get him.  
Everyone he knows is there, which isn’t really saying much. The swim club, Rin and Gou, Ama-chan and Coach Sasabe. Nagisa, Rin, and Makoto don’t look like they know whether to be happy or not. Their faces are strained.

They give him gifts, which is nice--mostly swimming things, new goggles from Gou, a swimsuit just like all his others but in pink from a smiling Ama-chan, a stack of magazines from Coach Sasabe that Ama-chan immediately throws into the pool. There’s no package from Nagisa or Makoto.

The party is starting to wind down when they hand him something silver and sleek that had been stashed behind the table with the cake. “It’s yours. Your grandmother wanted to wait until now for us to give it to you. You would have gotten it earlier, but she thought it best, after the accident…”

“What is it?” he asks. He picks it up by one end and lets it fall open. It looks like some kind of animal suit, a dolphin suit to be exact, though it seems to only be a single, uninterrupted piece of fabric. There’s a tail that covers him up to his stomach, then a back and sleeves. A very strange present, indeed. And his grandmother wanted to give it to him?

“You get mine as well,” says Makoto. He gets down on one knee, which is admittedly a little weird, and hands Haru another one, though this one is bigger and black with white spots.

“You would get mine too, but it has been...taken,” says Nagisa, glancing over at Rei. Rei looks like he’s thinking something over and doesn’t react.

“And here’s mine.” Rin shoves yet another strange animal suit in his hands, this one steely gray.

“What are they?” he asks again.

“Proof of allegiance, to put it simply,” replies Makoto. “They’re a symbol of loyalty to you, Haru. It’s tradition.”

“I don’t see how giving me a fursuit proves your loyalty to me,” he mutters.

“Look, just put yours on, it’ll make more sense when you do,” says Rin, crossing his arms. “Just make sure you’re in the pool first.”

It may just be March, but he doesn’t need to tell Haru twice. He hands the black and gray suits back to Makoto, then pulls off his clothes and dives into the water with his own.

He leans on the side of the pool and slides his legs into what seems to be the tail, then pulls his arms into the sleeves.

Instantly, he feels...different.

He feels better.

\--

The next time he goes for a swim in the ocean, it is not as a break from the tedium of his everyday life.

It is a return to his home.

**Author's Note:**

> I tried that style of writing where you imply a whole bunch of stuff but don't actually really say what's going on and it's FRICKING HARD
> 
> plus I switched to present tense about a quarter of the way through and I started changing it back to past but them I realized I liked it better in present so I changed it back and then I was like "the beginning's better in past" so it's in two tenses WHATEVER
> 
> there's so much stuff like backstory I didn't say you guys can talk to me about it if you want on here or on my tumblr or whatever


End file.
